


Dinner

by MJ (mjr91)



Series: Learning to Walk [1]
Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, Barba rolls up sleeves, M/M, Making up tags is fun, Unofficial Sequel, notmyyachtisnotatotalmonster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 21:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10625559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ
Summary: Bella invites Barba to dinner.  Unofficial sequel to notmyyacht's I Won't Run, I Won't Fly series.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notmyyacht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmyyacht/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Celebration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4245642) by [notmyyacht](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notmyyacht/pseuds/notmyyacht). 



> I haven't written much since my last fandom died, and I've been depressed as well, but somehow found myself pimped into SVU Barbaslash. Reading over older stories I fell in love with notmyyacht's 2015 Barba/Carisi two-part short series, and realized there was a scene I wanted to see. So I'm rude, and I decided to write it myself now. I thank notmyyacht for not killing me for falling into her sandbox. (Please, don't kill me!)

Bella calls Barba in the middle of the work day.  They haven’t spoken in weeks, not since the day he and Bella celebrated Sonny’s birthday at a coffee shop near the museum.  He’s still lonely, the bed still cold, the tacky Mets mug Sonny used to use for morning coffee at Barba’s apartment still on the counter near the Keurig and the French press pot, so that Barba can torture himself a little more every morning thinking about how fucking cheerful Sonny was immediately upon waking up.  Barba hated Sonny’s cheerful morning routine.  And he misses it like hell.

Bella is inviting Barba to dinner with her, and with Tommy, and with baby Dominick.  She’s kept in contact – she’d asked him before little Dominick’s baptism if he’d be Dominick’s godfather.  He’d said no to that; he was baptized Catholic himself, he’d made his way through Catholic school, but he’s so far lapsed he might as well claim to be Hindu.  Or, more likely, Satanist, considering where his father’s family thought he’d gone.  Men, after all.  Men, unrepentantly, regularly.  He’s glad he’s long out of contact with his father’s family.  His father had never accepted anything about him, and neither had they.

Sonny’s family is nothing like that, however, and Bella is sweet, and he can’t say no to the words “my mother’s lasagna recipe.”  He’s had Mrs. Carisi’s lasagna.  He is only weaker for Macallan 18 and for… Sonny, oh, Sonny… than he is for Mrs. Carisi’s lasagna.

Bella’s and Tommy’s place is small and simple, nothing like Barba’s stylish thirtieth floor apartment, nor like the Carisis’ Victorian shingled home in Tottenville near Raritan Bay, built during the oystering days of Staten Island, before Tottenville became a choice bedroom community and developments started flooding the areas that once held woods or factories in the neighborhood.  But Barba grew up in far worse in the barrio, and despite the façade that most people see, the one that makes them think he grew up on Central Park West, he’s easily comfortable taking off his jacket, vest, and tie, rolling up his sleeves, and sitting down for dinner in the cluttered, homey apartment kitchen. 

This is the side of himself that no one sees, the one he’s never had to fake, the one that his previous lawyer/doctor/stockbroker boyfriends never saw, but that Sonny knew well.  Bella and Tommy know it too.  The Carisis know it.  The Carisis, who fell easily into “look, our son is finally dating a Catholic, even if… he… is sort of lapsed.  Sonny will get him back.”  He doesn’t much believe in God.  Believing in Sonny was enough.  Both for him and for Sonny’s sister, who actually asks him to say grace.  It doesn’t occur to him to protest, and words that he hasn’t spoken in over two decades except with Carisis, words it doesn’t occur to him not to say, come promptly: “Bless us, Oh Lord, and bless these thy gifts…”

Bella smiles as she plunks a salad in front of him.  It’s a Caesar salad she’s made from the bagged salad kit that she hasn’t tossed in the trash yet.  Barba doesn’t mind.  He’s had worse in fancy restaurants, no better ones in various midtown bistros that he suspects of using the very same kits – the ones he uses sometimes himself when he cooks.  She’s added some fresh Parmesan to it, and extra croutons, which is exactly what Barba likes.  “I’m glad you could come over, Rafael.  It’s nice to see you.  Come over more often.  You don’t need us to call you – you can call us sometimes yourself, you know.”

Barba takes precisely two forkfuls of the salad, which he really likes, even if it isn’t what people think he would (all right, the Carisis know it, and Olivia Benson and Amanda Rollins know it, and those are enough people to know the dirty secret of his middle class averageness) before he speaks.  “Why do you do it, Bella?  I know it’s because Sonny and I were together, but my being asked to be Dominick’s godfather, my having dinner with you three, it doesn’t bring Sonny back.”

Tommy looks at him a bit defensively.  “What, we can’t invite someone we like over for dinner?”

“It’s more than that,” Bella points out.  “You’re family.  When Aunt Maria married Uncle George, mama’s uncle, and he died, we still have her over for all the family events.  Mama invites her to dinner every Sunday.”

“That’s different,” Barba tells her.  “They were married for what, thirty years?”  Good lord, he actually remembers who’s who in the Carisi family.  “And they had kids, who are your mother’s cousins.  She’s family.”  
  
“So are you!” Bella flares out, fiercely.  “You might not have been married to Sonny yet, but you probably would have been.  We love you.  And I know for a fact that if you’d asked Dad, he’d have welcomed you into the family.  You and Sonny… you just didn’t have time.  And we know you’re as broken up as we are, if you want to admit it or not.  Every time one of us goes to the cemetery, we know you’ve left flowers.  You’re there all the time.  We’re not blind or stupid.  We’re Carisis, and just like Aunt Maria, so are you.  You can’t escape us that easily.”

Barba’s touched, painfully.  He’d grown up the child of a single mother and her crude, abusive ex-husband and, as far as Barba was concerned, ex-father.  Lucia Barba’s family was small; Barba’s father’s was large, and as crude and obnoxious as he was, and he kept a wide berth from them and their garbage.  The Carisis had welcomed their son’s friend, even as they came to discover how much more he was to Sonny than that, and the idea of being generally loved by a large group of people called family was novel and gratifying, even if it made no sense, and to Barba, it didn’t.  “Does this mean I have to go to the Sunday dinners?”

“Call mama.  She misses how much you love her rosemary-stuffed chicken.  According to her, you’re the only one of us who really appreciates how hard she works on Sunday dinners.  She’s threatened to send you her tomato gravy recipe, and she won’t give that to any of us!”

“Oh Lord, I’m trapped.”

“You’re not trapped.  You’re Sonny’s guy.  You’re one of us, Rafael.  Quit being a stranger.  Dominick needs his uncle.”

And damn if that didn’t do it.  Rafael Barba was a man all too easily moved to tears, and he willed them to stay in his eyes, not to run down his face.

He steeled himself for an appropriately sarcastic or cutting remark.  One that wasn’t too bad, though.  One that would  suggest he really did care under the evil front.  “Tell your mother I’ll be there Sunday.  But if you don’t bring this little guy here, I’m leaving.  Got it?”  Ugh. That was insufficiently Severus Snape of him.  It was practically Ron Weasley.

It was the best he could do.

Bella and Tommy look at him.  He knows they can see his eyes, that under the dark circles, there’s some faint  moisture that can’t be sweat. 

Bella goes in, making a kill that Barba could only wish he could deliver in court.  “Sonny loved you a lot.  So do we.  We’re glad you’re home.  We need you, too.” 

She chokes back a tear all too noisily; it’s all Barba needs to trigger his own running down his cheeks, fortunately slowly and silently.  Tommy reaches over to grab her hand.  To Barba’s surprise, Tommy also reaches his other hand across the too-small table to grab Barba’s as well.  Tommy finally speaks again.  “We’re all in it together.  It’s okay.  And the lasagna’s gonna get cold.”

Barba and Bella look at each other, both chuckling slightly.  It’s not okay, not yet.  But it’s possible that someday it will be better.


End file.
